What a crazy day, night, day, and night it's been. Being in the Atlanta airport feels like AGES ago! For those who are just now catching up - Ryan and I were flying standby and did not make it on a flight our first go around Monday afternoon. We had to ride Marta home with some all too interesting characters and get picked up at the North Springs station. This ended up not being the worst thing because I got to catch up on my sleep, hangout with the parents, and get some delicious pancakes before heading back to the airport Monday afternoon to try try again.
The Flight
I was really hoping for a first class seat (since I will probably never actually splurge for one on my own) but instead I got the window seat on the exit row. I thought this was the second best option from first class but as it turns out the exit door is extremely loud and extremely cold. There is also no where to prop your feet up. I had seen most of the movies on the airplane already so I would watch half of one and then just switch. Since I wasn't able to get very comfortable I only got about an hour of sleep during the whole 9 hour flight. Ryan didn't have the most enjoyable flight either and had a stomachache from the beginning. Icing on the cake? We both left our portable chargers behind. Ryan left his charging in the Atlanta airport and I left mine on the airplane. Welcome to Barcelona...
(The views flying in were beautiful though!! So many mountains and green landscape.)
Getting out
We got to wait in line for probably an hour and a half thinking about our left behind comrades (the chargers) since there were 3-4 flights that got in that morning and about 3-4 people working the passport offices. It really was ridiculous that they didn't have more employees working there. We weren't even at the end of the line! I'm sure the people behind us had to wait at least another hour until they could get through to their baggage. So to sum things up - long line leads to stamped passports, which takes us to our bags that both arrived safely, and a nice delta employee who got me my charger back (woohoo!). Now that we had our stuff we were ready to go. The only problem was, we didn't know how to go anywhere. At this point we were nearing the 24 hour mark for being awake so thinking and planning were getting difficult. After looking at trains, metro passes, day passes, taxis, and talking to not very helpful people, we finally figured out what to do. We hopped on our bus and headed to Plaza Calalunya!
Dazed and Confused
Still dazed and confused from sleep deprivation we sat on some park benches waiting for our check in time with our air bnb. All the apartments here have balconies with little gardens and they look beautiful. It's either gardens or laundry drying, but I prefer to look at the ones with flowers instead of sheets and underwear. We took our time walking through the streets and made our way to the apartment. It's in a great location that's in a walking distance to most things! We dropped our bags off and passed out for longer than I wanted to (I wanted to catch a bike tour) Tomorrow we're waking up early for a trip to the mountains though so I guess it's good we got to rest up today. Oh did I mention the apartment is on like the fifth floor with no elevator? It's like hiking a mountain every time we come home! Anyway, we walked to get dinner on the beach and had some delicious sangria and churros with our meal. It was nice to relax by the water and people watch for a while. There are so many tourists here and most employees speak English. I've tried speaking Spanish but it mostly just confuses people.
Group travel vs solo travel
We headed back before it got super dark outside and unintentionally passed out again. But I woke up and remembered to write this so you're welcome dad!! Tomorrow we're going to Montersatt and I think it's going to be really cool. I'll send lots of pics! Traveling alone is much different than traveling with a group. It's kind of nice to have things scheduled and someone making sure you get to where you need to be. Group things also make you appreciate free time when you have it as opposed to traveling alone and every second is free time. Something I miss is during my study abroad we were learning about the cities we were exploring. I wish we could do more of that here. It makes you appreciate the city more and makes it feel a little smaller. But that's something we can work on in the next few days!
Ok off to bed! Hopefully I can still sleep after all my naps. Ttyl!!
Emily
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